In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
With crime shooting back up to the level it was in the 1980s, and with a new Mayor of New York, let us look back on when another Mayor, Ed Koch, talked about tackling crime, abet without much success, with William F. Buckley, Jr.
The teaching of even mathematics is increasingly being taught crouched in woke activism. This is, sadly, not a new thing, as this textbook page from the Cultural Revolution in China sadly demonstrates.
Sample pg of Mao’s Woke math textbook in Cultural Revolution.
Mao quote: Never ever forget class conflict
Math Q: Before the liberation, poor peasant Uncle Liu rented 4 acres of land. He had to pay 12 Dou of rice to landowner. How much Uncle Liu was exploited every yr? pic.twitter.com/KDoFgJFpcK
— Xi Van Fleet (@XVanFleet) December 15, 2021
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Gaia über alles.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
“Stupid Nazis!”
The Democrats want to make the Gaia Jugend real…
“A group of more than 80 House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday laid out their vision for a climate jobs program called the Civilian Climate Corps that is expected to be part of a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill filled with Democratic priorities.
“A new letter from Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum pushed for the program to prioritize natural climate solutions, clean energy, climate resilience and addressing environmental justice.
“The lawmakers also called for ‘ambitious’ labor standards, including a living wage and an award to help participants pay for college or pay back student loans. The letter did not specify how much money should be provided for that program.”
“They said half of the climate program’s investment should be directed into front-line communities disproportionately impacted by environmental issues and that half of the Corps’ members should be recruited from such communities.”
They’ve eaten Howard!
The radical environmentalist Left have increasingly started to declare that everything in nature has human rights, from the moon to elephants, and from mountains to swamps, in order to prevent anyone from utilizing these natural resources, even if such utility one of the rare non-CO2 emitting energy sources, namely, hydroelectric energy from dams, to protect the human rights of fish.
“Salmon can’t go to court, but the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe says the fish at the heart of its and other Northwest tribal cultures should have legal rights.
“The tribe has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Tsuladxʷ in Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Court to assert those rights in the tribe’s traditional territory in Washington’s North Cascades.
“‘These rights include, but are not limited to, the right to pure water and freshwater habitat; the right to a healthy climate system and a natural environment free from human-caused global warming impacts and emissions,’ the suit states.
“‘Not just to declare that they have rights, but that also you and I have a duty to protect those rights,’ said Jack Fiander, Sauk-Suiattle tribal counsel. ‘We’re sort of like their trustee and they’re our minors.’
“The suit accuses Seattle City Light of violating the salmon’s and the tribe’s rights by operating three dams on the Skagit River with no way for fish to get past them.
“Gorge, Diablo, and Ross dams provide about one-fifth of the electricity used in Seattle with essentially zero impact on the global climate.”
Progressives, including the increasingly powerful digital oligarchs, seem to want to create a new feudal society, abet one they delude themselves into thinking will be a shiny sci-fi utopia that is always 20 minutes into the future…
One growing lynchpin of this purported utopian future is the rise of A.I. and automation in manufacturing, which would lead to a “purple wage” scenario whereby most people get all the basics to live and love without having to work, only doing so if it their passion or whatnot, like an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not even customer service or even coding will require actual human input soon enough.
“AI is also automating jobs in customer service, accounting, and a host of other professions. For instance, companies like Thankful, Yext, and Forethought use AI to automate customer support. This shift is often imperceptible to the customer, who doesn’t know if they’re speaking to a biological intelligence or a machine. The rise of AI-powered customer service has big implications for the workforce. It’s estimated that 85 percent of customer interactions are already handled without human interaction.
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 3 million customer service representatives employed in the United States. Many of these jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI. When jobs like these are automated away, the question is: Where do the displaced workers go?
“The answer is not clear. It’s possible that many of these workers will be re-employed in other fields. But it’s also possible that they will become unemployed, and that the economy will struggle to absorb them. This is driving calls for a universal basic income, in which the government provides all citizens with a basic income to live on, to offset job losses due to automation.
“…
“Just over a year ago, an OpenAI beta tester posited that AI may one day replace many coder jobs. At the time, OpenAI hadn’t yet released its code-generation engine, Codex, which now allows AI to autonomously write code in multiple languages. While the Codex of today is fairly primitive, one doesn’t need to be a futurist to see how this technology could be used to automate away many coder jobs in the future. As AI gets better at understanding code and writing it, it will soon come to match and ultimately exceed human skill levels.”
The flip side of this situation is that those who control the digital world and the A.I. manufacturing will become like Feudal Lords who run things and can revel in all the benefits of Nomenklatura. This will be less “ Star Trek: The Next Generation” and more “Paranoia” the role playing game with Ultraviolet programmers and Infrared scrubs who are interchangeable.
Pictured: Your New Technocratic Overlords.
Even if you live in California and know of the mostly government-created water crisis there, you probably don’t know just how bad it is and likely will become.
This thread about California's water problems was sent to me by an account who wishes to remain low profile
Everything after is me quoting him"It's much worse (re infrastructure), and so much of the impending disaster conditions are downstream of this green energy madness pic.twitter.com/M1rKGuVAk1
— EnochPowell (@MogTheUrbanite) January 12, 2022
The majority of the state population depends on water run from the northern and central state Sierra Nevada snow melt – this water passes through gravity fed canals (State Water Project) most of the way (from Sacramento to San Diego, roughly speaking)-
— EnochPowell (@MogTheUrbanite) January 12, 2022
-but needs to clear the Tehachapi mountains, south of Bakersfield. It's an enormous hydraulic lift, and is mostly powered via Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (which they are planning to shutter 2024). pic.twitter.com/Io1noeI8pp
— EnochPowell (@MogTheUrbanite) January 12, 2022
Another state is taking up the fight against Critical Race Theory, this time being the state of Georgia. The main operative part of HB 888 reads as follows:
(b) No state agency, local board of education, or public elementary or secondary school administrator, teacher, or other personnel shall compel any individual to affirm, adopt, adhere to, profess, or promote concepts in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the federal
Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the federal Education Amendments of 1972, Code Section 20-2-131, and Code Section 20-2-315, including, but not limited to, the following:
(1) That individuals of any race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin are inherently superior or inferior;
(2) That individuals should be adversely or advantageously treated on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin;
(3) That individuals, by virtue of their race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin bear collective guilt and are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin;
(4) That governing systems or programs which were designed to identify, select, or promote participants on the basis of merit or work ethic are discriminatory or were created by members of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin to oppress members of another race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin;
(5) That any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin;
(6) That an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin; and
(7) That the United States is a systemically racist country.
Puberty blockers are being increasingly pushed and used on children as a matter of course under the idea that puberty will just be paused for a while, and that the children can then decide to transition via cross-sex hormones if their transgenderism persists. That they can not become the opposite sex is science. But the idea that all that is happening is that puberty is “put on pause” and that they can just start it up again without any consequences… is also a lie, and a potentially far more dangerous one because it is more believable to those who don’t know better. Thankfully there are those who highlight the lies and provide factual information to the contrary.
It turns out that puberty blockers don’t allow the body to conform to a transgender child’s transgender brain, but actually change the brain chemistry so it becomes “transgender”, or at least makes the child more likely to persist in their beliefs.
How does “pausing” puberty by GnRH analogues effect the development of the brain?
Sex-hormones at puberty are now thought to cause a second wave of structural reorganisation, as well as their activational effects. https://t.co/qPVDyJN04B
— Sam Stagg (@SammySammyStagg) November 20, 2021
Independent of gonadal steroids, there is a progressive decrease in the brains sensitivity to testosterone that continues into adulthood. pic.twitter.com/bgZobs6Hxv
— Sam Stagg (@SammySammyStagg) November 20, 2021
News of the Week for Jan. 16th, 2021
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
With the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress pushing to Federalize elections, let us look back when William F. Buckley, Jr. pondered the future of states’ rights, with guest Harry Golden.
Until next Friday.
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